Friday, 16 August 2013

THE KISSAWAY TRAIL - ALBUM REVIEW

The Kissaway Trail - Breach (Yep Roc Records)

The Kissaway Trail - Breach

Release date: 26th August 2013

It so often happens that a band's
name outweighs the quality of their music (Audio Bullys being one that springs
to mind) but, with this new album from Danes The Kissaway Trail, it is the song
titles that steal the show. That's not to say that the music is bad, per se,
it's more that they are fairly forgettable. There are plenty of promising
moments, such as the Flaming Lips tinged 'Norrebro' and 'Tell the Truth (the
Breach)' and the stomp'n'pomp of 'The Springsteen Implosion' but there's
nothing that really sticks out as a sure fire hit in comparison to the rest of
the album. 'Sarah Jevo' starts off excitingly but urgent, stuttering beats but,
like the rest of the album, the tune is just lost in a muddy, incoherent wash
of guitars that don't really go anywhere. Even on the more electro fuelled
'Beauty Still Rebels', the Kissaway Trail still sound like Delphic as heard
through the ear plugs worn by a nightclub bouncer.

There are some tunes in here
somewhere and the drumming is really nice and punchy, particularly on 'So
Sorry, I'm Not' but when the song title is the most appealing thing about a
song then it's hard to get too excited by the music. On 'Sara (R.I.Punk)' the
drums are again excellent but then that wash of keyboards and guitars just
buries the rhythm and the muddiness is back. 'The Sinking' and 'Shaking The
Mote' are fairly run of the mill slacker indie tracks without any real peaks or
troughs to get you hooked in. There is a pointless 90 seconds filled by 'Robot
(Think Of Me You'd Never Figured)' which, presumably, was just included so they
could fit some more held chords in to the album to get the most out of their
new synths. The album closer, 'A Rainy Night In Soho', has ambitions of being a
Killers-esque anthem but again it never really gets going and, for once, the
drums let this one down. To use a cooking analogy, this is album is akin to
taking some of the finest ingredients and then cooking them for 4 days in a
stewing pot until all the flavour, urgency, zest and life has been cooked out
and all you are left with is a brownish, homogenous gloop. It's such a shame
because I had high hopes for this album but it just feels like the Kissaway
trail have tried too hard to be cool and forgotten about the music.